History UngratefulBastard / Literature

** Theon Greyjoy is seen as this by the Starks and their supporters for turning on Robb by siding with his biological family the Greyjoys and taking Winterfell. Theon had been treated well as the Starks' "ward" and the Starks had more or less considered him one of the family. It is however pointed out that Theon was their ''hostage'' and thus his life was always being implicitly threatened while he was with them. A part of Theon always resented the notion that he should be grateful that they didn't make his life hell or kill him.

* ''Literature/SwansBraidAndOtherTalesOfTerizan'': Jameel tries to kill Terizan by locking her inside the treasure vault after she saved his life three times before. Luckily, she's got an escape route prepared.

* ''Literature/NimsIsland'': The author Alexandra got over her agoraphobia, travelled halfway across the world, and nearly drowned trying to rescue Nim, a child left alone on an island who had been corresponding with Alex by email...and Nim proceeds to berate her for not being the hero she pictured from Alex's books.

* Leah from ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' stands up to Bella on Jacob's behalf, only for Jacob to side with ''Bella'' and [[MadeOutToBeAJerkass get on Leah]] [[WoundedGazelleGambit for making Bella cry]].

* Leah from ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' stands up to Bella on Jacob's behalf, only for Jacob to side with ''Bella'' and [[MadeOutToBeAJerkass get on Leah]] [[WoundedGazelleGambit for making Bella cry]].

* ''Literature/BazilBroketail'': When Relkin meets Zettila for the first time, he prevents a catastrophe when the horses pulling her carriage panic and go out of control. In return, not only does she curse him, but later selects him personally as a sacrifice to her goddess.

* Those who betray their benefactors are (if ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' is to be trusted) in the lowest circle of hell, completely encased in the frozen lake and contorted horribly. The only ones beyond them are Satan, and Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, who Satan is grinding apart.

* Zeus is most definitely this in ''Literature/TheCampHalfBloodSeries''. At the end of ''The Lightning Thief'', the guy can't even cough up a thank you to Percy and threatens to kill him if he travels in the sky again. At the end of ''The Last Olympian'', he can barely eke out a thank you to Hades and Poseidon, agree to Percy's requests, and fails to fulfill all of them. At the end of ''The Blood of Olympus'', Zeus says he is proud of Jason, and yet the moment Jason questions Zeus (when Zeus is wrong) Zeus is one step away from killing his own son.

* The short story ''[[Creator/GuyDeMaupassant Boule De Suif]]'' follows a group of French residents fleeing to Le Havre. The title character, Elisabeth Rousset, [[BigBeautifulWoman nicknamed Boule De Suif]], is a prostitute and looked down upon by the other occupants of the coach, but she doesn't let that stop her from kindly sharing her food with them. Later, they are detained by a Prussian officer, and the rest of the party convince Boule De Suif to sleep with him, so that they may leave. She does so...and they repay her self-sacrifice by a) throwing a party without inviting her, and b) treating her with contempt when they are allowed to leave, and refusing to share their food with her, even though she's the reason they were even allowed to leave in the first place!

* Anyone who has read Creator/StephenKing's ''Everything's Eventual'' will know that Diane, the character from the short story ''Lunch at the Gotham Cafe'', is '''definitely''' this trope. You would think, that even after her husband just saved her life from a psychotic waiter, even after treating him very coldly, and demanding a divorce, would at least warrant a "thank you" from her!

* ''Literature/GulliversTravels'': Despite the fact that the title character helps the Lilliputians by stealing the Blefuscudian fleet and crippling them, they're angry because he refuses to completely ''eradicate'' Blefuscu. Later, they convict Gulliver for "making water" (urinating) in public despite the fact that he did it to put out a fire and saved hundreds of lives in the process, and he's sentenced to be blinded. Gulliver refuses to destroy the city [[ThouShaltNotKill for the same reason he wouldn't do that to their enemies]], and with the help of one friendly Lilliputian, he is able to escape to Blefuscu, and ''they'', of all people, are willing to help him find an abandoned boat that helps him find a ship with people his own size.
* Palicrovol in ''Literature/HartsHope'', so much so that [[spoiler:the book consists of a plea by another character for him not to kill Orem]]. It doesn't help that he contributed to the problem by raping the BigBad, Beauty, when she was a child. So once [[spoiler:Orem frees him and his closest friends -- including the narrator -- from their various curses, at the cost of Orem's beloved son, Palicrovol sets out to kill him due to Orem's time as Beauty's second-string consort]]. Discovering that Orem is his son (by a different woman) only prompts him to add incest to his list of charges.

** Meanwhile, Harry never shows any gratitude to Snape for saving his life in the first book, or for attempting to save him and his friends from Sirius Black (at the time believed to be a mass murderer), or for saving their life ''again'' in ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix Order of the Phoenix]]''. Snape's a dick to Harry, but you'd think saving his life would merit at least a "thank you" from a kid whose defining characteristic is love. Then again it is justified since Harry's animosity has everything to do with Snape treating him like crap for no good reason. In the case of Sirius Black, Harry knew that Sirius was innocent by that time and didn't think that Snape's motivation was altruistic but merely revenge against his old enemy.[[spoiler: Subverted when Harry gives Snape his due after he learns the truth by petitioning that Snape be awarded an Order of Merlin (posthumously) and naming one of his sons after him (Albus Severus Potter).]]

* Although the large majority of the population of planet Grayson are convinced to look past Literature/{{Honor Harrington}}'s more liberal mores and outsider status (they're pretty much Space Mormons, and Honor is comfortable with some things San Franciscans would feel uneasy about) the first time she personally fends off a coup of their leadership and saves their planet from orbital bombardment, villains for several later books are mined from those who weren't swayed and hate the social changes that followed.

* Literature/MercyThompson

* ''LightNovel/UltimateAntihero'' might as well be titled ''Ungrateful Bastards: the Light Novel''. The main character, Kamishiro Homura, goes on to save the last remnants of mankind, risking his life, and sanity, by reading a tome of Eldritch lore, handed to him by The Crawling Chaos to go up against a "Demon King" class monster which, with a single attack, ''[[ApocalypseWow scorched 96 percent of the Earth's surface.]]'' How do the governments of the 10 remaining countries respond to his courage and self-sacrifice? A victory parade? Hail him as a savior and champion of humanity? '''NO!''' They slap a seal on his powers that would risk 70% ''of the Earth'' if he tries to remove it, and constantly track him day and night like a wanted fugitive, strip away his human rights and erase all public records of his background, making it impossible for him to have gainful employment. They slander him, call him a traitor to his species to the point where everybody of the human race, bar a small number of people that can actually be counted on one hand, look upon him with unbridled terror. To top it all off, these same government officials continuously send ''assassins'', if not whole armies, after him to try to kill him, and resent the fact that ''he still fights to save humanity in spite of them''. So how do they ultimately decide to deal with the ongoing demon threat? ''They create an artificial Archangel Michael to kill him and obliterate his home nation.'' [[KnightTemplar In order to secure "salvation from Heaven."]] [[BlueAndOrangeMorality Let's just say Michael doesn't have the same definition of "salvation" that they do.]]

* At the end of ''Vanguard'' from ''Literature/TheGenesisFleet'' series, Lieutenant Robert Geary and Sergeant-turned-Major Melee Darcy have just saved the nascent colony of Glenlyon from the much better equipped Scathans, seeking to conquer Glenlyon. How does the Glenlyon Council thank them for doing the impossible, getting hurt in the process, and losing many of their sailors/soldiers? Why, a pat on the back and an assignment to a third-rate posting in the new Glenlyon fleet and ground forces, respectively (with Melee demoted back to sergeant). Naturally, both tell the Council (well, most of them, there ''is'' one decent and grateful politician on the planet, actually) to go to hell and resign. Of course, this is par for the course with the author, who isn't of a high opinion of most politicians. Notably averted with the government of Kosatka, who are extremely grateful to Geary and his crew for saving their planet from a hostile destroyer and send a ship of their own to help Glenlyon in return. Taken UpToEleven in the third novel, where Geary is tasked with defending the system from several enemy ships with a single destroyer. He does his best to give the enemy the runaround, avoiding the direct battle he can't win. Meanwhile, the planetbound politicians are urging him to attack. He points out that it would be suicide and would result in the planet becoming undefended. At least this way he can keep the enemy away from the planet. The politician who's on his side urges the most vocal opponents to give Geary a direct order to attack the enemy, but they're savvy enough to know that it's a bad decision, so they're not going to have their hands directly on it. They're just playing up their outrage for the voters. In the end, [[spoiler:a makeshift alliance of other colonies saves Glenlyon]]. Geary is told that he'll be seen as a coward and that his role in all these events will be downplayed in history. Indeed, Geary's long-removed descendant John Geary had no idea how important Robert had been to the planet's early history. Averted in the case of Darcy, who is promoted to general and ends up being key in founding the Alliance Marine Corps. She then writes a letter detailing all these events in order to make sure that Robert's role isn't forgotten, which is how John learns about it.

* In ''Literature/AlexisCarew: Mutineer'', Alexis is reassigned to Captain Neals, who is horribly sexist and free with the lash. Against her better judgement Alexis rescues him from Hanoverese captivity despite the fact he continuously tried to haze her into resigning, pulled a UriahGambit to get her killed or captured, and distracted her when she refused to beg forgiveness on bended knee and had her flogged. The moment the escapees are picked up by friendly forces, he orders her and the other crew arrested for mutiny. [[spoiler:Fortunately the CourtMartial goes in her favor.]]

* The short story ''[[Creator/GuyDeMaupassant Boule De Suif]]'' follows a group of French residents fleeing to Le Havre. The title character, Elisabeth Rousset, [[BigBeautifulWoman nicknamed Boule De Suif]], is a prostitute, and looked down upon by the other occupants of the coach, but she doesn't let that stop her from kindly sharing her food with them. Later, they are detained by a Prussian officer, and the rest of the party convince Boule De Suif to sleep with him, so that they may leave. She does so...and they repay her self-sacrifice by a) throwing a party without inviting her, and b) treating her with contempt when they are allowed to leave, and refusing to share their food with her, even though she's the reason they were even allowed to leave in the first place!

** In ''Literature/TheFifthElephant'' Vimes tackles the King of the Dwarves out of the way of a falling chandelier, and is promptly imprisoned because laying hands on the king is a crime. Vimes, of course, points out how stupid this is, but the (only) defense is "[[LawfulStupid It's the law]]".

** Detective Jerome Rudolph, "the [[ProfessionalButtKisser Brown Nosed]] [[DirtyCop Cop Cop]]", gets his life saved on multiple occasions by Harry and Murphy, from supernatural forces that terrify him and which he rabidly denies. In return he dedicates his life to ruining theirs, getting them investigated by the FBI and making Murphy lose her job. In ''Literature/BattleGround'' this culminates in him [[spoiler: murdering Murphy]] during the chaos of the attack on the city.

* ''Literature/GulliversTravels'': Despite the fact that the title character helps the Lilliputians by stealing the Blefuscudian fleet and crippling them, they're angry because he refuses to completely ''eradicate'' Blefuscu. Later, they convict Gulliver for "making water" (urinating) in public despite the fact that he did it to put out a fire and saved hundreds of lives in the process, and he's sentenced to be blinded. Gulliver refuses to destroy the city [[ThouShaltNotKill for the same reason he wouldn't to that to their enemies]], and with the help of one friendly Lilliputian, he is able to escape to Blefuscu, and ''they'', of all people, are willing to help him find an abandoned boat that helps him find a ship with people his own size.

** No matter how many time Harry saves his school, the students of Hogwarts will still turn against him on a moment's notice on the strength of lies purported by the government.

** Even the Pack as a whole is always this toward Mercy. No matter how many times Mercy has stood for the pack or put her body and life on the line, The Pack just refuse to accept her even as Adam’s wife. Often blaming her for their troubles or ridiculing her. It gets worse in Night Broken when most of the Pack actually takes Adam’s ex-wife, Christy’s side and actually show they prefer her over Mercy. While some members such as Ben, Warren and Honey are good to Mercy because they are either her friends or have enough respect for her, the rest rarely show Mercy any respect. The situation got so bad, that Adam finally addressed the issue in Fire Touched by threatening to kill whoever disrespects Mercy aka his wife again.

* ''Mother Bruce'' series: At the end of "Bruce's Big Storm", even after the other animals help rebuild the part of the neighbor-hating Bruce's house when a tree had fell through it, Bruce is ''still'' pissed off at them.

* Literature/SisterhoodSeries by Creator/FernMichaels: The protagonists, of all people, are these! ''Payback'' has Mark Lane save Julia's life, and instead of being grateful, Charles Martin sends three men with presidential gold shields to intimidate Mark, and the three men perform a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown on Mark's friend Jack Emery. In that book ''Deja Vu'', almost all the men working with the Vigilantes up and leave, and Charles has to explain to the ladies that their men risk their lives, careers and reputations on a daily basis for them, and they have never shown any sort of gratitude for their men! Unfortunately, the ladies do not take that to heart, because the men successfully find the ladies' target, point out his location, and the women respond to this by performing a No Holds Barred Beatdown on their target in front of their men, without even allowing the men to have a piece of him! Ungrateful Bitches!

** Tyrion's trial for supposedly [[spoiler:murdering Joffrey]] has him do this inwardly when the court is unabashedly a KangarooCourt that will pronounce him guilty through half truths, outright lying, and paid witnesses, in addition to not allowing Tyrion to speak in his own defense. In the last book, Tyrion had saved King's Landing from being taken by Stannis and massacring everyone. Thanks to him, when Stannis otherwise would have overrun the city in short order due to a lack of any large armies near it, crappy defenses, and a poorly disciplined and inexperienced City Watch, Tyrion's gambits involving a massive chain and shipfulls of wildfire, in addition to putting more men in the City Watch, let King's Landing hold out long enough for TheCavalry to come riding in, but TheCavalry got all of the glory and Tyrion got nothing but the loss of half of his nose.
** The Lannisters seem to get this a lot. Tywin was a very competent Hand of the King to Aerys, and kept the Seven Kingdoms stable even as Aerys became less so. Aerys felt no gratitude towards the man who had been a good friend and ally to him for much of his life, only envy. He snubbed Tywin at every turn -- making lewd remarks about [[DroitDuSeigneur invoking lord's right]] with Tywin's new wife Joanna, taking Tywin's favorite son Jaime as one of the Kingsguard just to deprive Tywin of his preferred heir, and refusing Tywin's request to marry Rhaegar to Cersei. Aerys rubbed salt in the wound with that last one by claiming that Tywin was a mere servant, and kings don't marry their sons off to the daughters of their servants. That was the last straw for Tywin -- he immediately retired from being the Hand of the King. Given all the crap Aerys threw his way, Tywin's later power play against him almost seems reasonable (the brutal sacking of King's Landing, not so much).

** After Robert's death, his brother Renly declares himself King with the support of the Tyrells, leapfrogging over Stannis' (his older brother) claim. When the two meet later (after Stannis also claims the crown on the basis that Robert's children are born of incest), Renly makes it obvious that he has no compuction about killing his brother if he won't give his claim up, stating he owes him no loyalty. The ungrateful part comes from when he was nine, a time where Stannis almost died of hunger trying to keep him alive during the Siege of Storm's End... which was held by the Tyrells.
** King Aegon III spared Alicent Hightower at the end of the Dance of the Dragons, even though she'd been calling for her son, Aegon II, to slice III into tiny, tiny pieces, and had helped start the whole damn affair through her own desire for power. She shows absolutely no gratitude whatsoever, even telling her granddaughter, Aegon's wife, to slice his throat open. Did we mention both Aegon III and his wife were ''kids'' at that point? In fairness, Aegon's regents figured this out pretty quick, and felt it was a very sensible idea not to let the former queen anywhere near the king in case she tried to murder him.

* In ''Literature/WolfHall'', the Boleyn family towards Thomas Cromwell. He was the one who [[CuttingTheKnot cut the knot]] to establish Henry as head of the Church and thus allowed him to annul his own marriage and marry Anne -- before that they had just been minor nobles, mildly distinguished by Thomas Boleyn's ambassadorship and Mary being a former mistress. But they soon decided that ''they'' are responsible for ''Cromwell's'' rise, not the other way around. As soon as Cromwell shows he's not going to be a mindless YesMan, Anne declares him her enemy and the other Boleyns threaten to kill him when Henry is thought dead in a jousting mishap, and George Boleyn tries to turn Henry against Cromwell later.

* At the end of ''Vanguard'' from ''Literature/TheGenesisFleet'' series, Lieutenant Robert Geary and Sergeant-turned-Major Melee Darcy have just saved the nascent colony of Glenlyon from the much better equipped Scathans, seeking to conquer Glenlyon. How does the Glenlyon Council thank them for doing the impossible, getting hurt in the process, and losing many of their sailors/soldiers? Why, a pat on the back and an assignment to a third-rate posting in the new Glenlyon fleet and ground forces, respectively (with Melee demoted back to sergeant). Naturally, both tell the Council (well, most of them, there ''is'' one decent and grateful politician on the planet, actually) to go to hell and resign. Of course, this is par for the course with the author, who isn't of a high opinion of most politicians. Notably averted with the government of Kosatka, who are extremely grateful to Geary and his crew for saving their planet from a hostile destroyer and send a ship of their own to help Glenlyon in return. Taken UpToEleven in the third novel, where Geary is tasked with defending the system from several enemy ships with a single destroyer. He does his best to give the enemy the runaround, avoiding the direct battle he can't win. Meanwhile, the planetbound politicians are urging him to attack. He points out that it would be suicide and would result in the planet becoming undefended. At least this way he can keep the enemy away from the planet. The politician who's on his side urges the most vocal opponents to give Geary a direct order to attack the enemy, but they're savvy enough to know that it's a bad decision, so they're not going to have their hands directly on it. They're just playing up their outrage for the voters. In the end, [[spoiler:a makeshift alliance of other colonies saves Glenlyon]]. Geary is told that he'll be seen as a coward and that his role in all these events will be downplayed in history. Indeed, Geary's long-removed descendant John Geary had no idea how important Robert had been to the planet's early history.

* At the end of ''Vanguard'' from ''Literature/TheGenesisFleet'' series, Lieutenant Robert Geary and Sergeant-turned-Major Melee Darcy have just saved the nascent colony of Glenlyon from the much better equipped Scathans, seeking to conquer Glenlyon. How does the Glenlyon Council thank them for doing the impossible, getting hurt in the process, and losing many of their sailors/soldiers? Why, a pat on the back and an assignment to a third-rate posting in the new Glenlyon fleet and ground forces, respectively (with Melee demoted back to sergeant). Naturally, both tell the Council (well, most of them, there ''is'' one decent and grateful politician on the planet, actually) to go to hell and resign. Of course, this is par for the course with the author, who isn't of a high opinion of most politicians. Notably averted with the government of Kosatka, who are extremely grateful to Geary and his crew for saving their planet from a hostile destroyer and send a ship of their own to help Glenlyon in return.

** This was mentioned in "Dark Force Rising." Joruus C'Baoth says Galaxy's hatred of the Jedi was there even before Sidious took over. C'Baoth doesn't even say Sidious took advantage of the hatred (though he's [[UnreliableNarrator insane]] and
may have exaggerated, there does seem to be truth in what he says).

** This was mentioned in "Dark Force Rising." Joruus C'Baoth says Galaxy's hatred of the Jedi was there even before Sidious took over. C'Baoth doesn't even say Sidious took advantage of the hatred.

* Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli makes an argument ''in favor'' of "ingratitude" in his ''Literature/DiscoursesOnLivy''--if it's the entire population of a free republic that's being ungrateful. Machiavelli points out that free peoples who reward their ambitious citizens who do genuinely heroic things in the republic's service with special rights or political power often end up not being free peoples much longer. He therefore praises the Romans for punishing men who [[IDidWhatIHadToDo went to possibly necessary extremes to protect or preserve Rome and its constitution]], [[WhatTheHellHero holding such men to account as if they hadn't done anything special]] and leaving them to take a pardon as a reward. When the Romans stopped doing this and started rewarding heroes with power, that was when the Republic became doomed.

** There is also Landislaw, whose big brother Garranon works his ass off to ensure his safety - Landislaw has nothing better to do than get himself into trouble.

* In Creator/AnneMcCaffrey's ''Literature/ToRidePegasus'', early on the Talents provide a warning that saves the life of, among others, a Senator who's arguing vehemently to deny them legal protection--even though it also risks the life of their strongest defender. Undaunted, the Senator not only accuses them of perpetrating a hoax but also insists that real psychics would have known better.

* In ''Literature/WolfHall'', the Boleyn family towards Thomas Cromwell. He was the one who [[CuttingTheKnot cut the knot]] to establish Henry as head of the Church and thus allowed him to annul his own marriage and marry Anne--before that they had just been minor nobles, mildly distinguished by Thomas Boleyn's ambassadorship and Mary being a former mistress. But they soon decided that ''they'' are responsible for ''Cromwell's'' rise, not the other way around. As soon as Cromwell shows he's not going to be a mindless YesMan, Anne declares him her enemy and the other Boleyns threaten to kill him when Henry is thought dead in a jousting mishap, and George Boleyn tries to turn Henry against Cromwell later.

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please place new examples in alphabetical order.

** Even the Pack as a whole is always this toward Mercy. No matter how many times Mercy has stood for the pack or put her body and life on the line, The Pack just refuse to accept her even as Adam’s wife. Often blaming her for their troubles or ridiculing her. It gets worse in Night Broken when most of the Pack actually takes Adam’s ex-wife, Christy’s side and actually show they prefer her over Mercy. While some members such as Ben, Warren and Honey are good to Mercy because they are either her friends or have enough respect for her, the rest rarely show Mercy any respect. The situation got so bad, that Adam finally addressed the issue in Fire Touched by threating to kill whoever disrespects Mercy aka his wife again.